Corporate Salmon - Fish in Business Suits Climbing an Escalator.

Heads up that I took a weekend off from the project to relax but also tinker with some other stuff! Here's what I worked on instead for the Game Maker's Toolkit Jam! Was fun to work on but also gave me some practice in UI design as well as building games at a super small size (96 x 128) which now love doing. May spend tomorrow morning get a version working on a device for fun.

I'll be back on with work on Corporate Salmon tomorrow, so don't worry too much about that!

Thanks for checking the project out, genuinely appreciate the nice feedback Corporate Salmon has received so far.

Here's some footage of me reworking the top of the escalator to have a flat surface. Originally planned to have it be a floor you arrived at, but it seems to be more entertaining as a section of the elevator that levels out. More tinkering to come!

1. Escalator top done and further optimisation - Rather than the stub you saw in the previous gif I posted, I used the top of the escalator from the boss level for a cap to the escalator banister. As an experiment, I built a function that optimises the resources used for the game. Previously, I had two separate objects for the front and back banister, but now I've just created a variable based local ID that can determine that I can label to be either a back or front banister. Depending on which one it is, the colour and layer position is altered. This worked and thanks to this, the storage for some of the biggest objects in the game can be halved. There is still a bunch of polishing to be done which I'll be doing tomorrow.

2. POWER UPS! - After realising the slow-mo function was being mistaken for lag, I created a separate object to collect to activate it. From this I designed several different powerups including x2 multipliers, low gravity and coin magnets. Here are some examples in action:

SLO MO

LOW GRAVITY

Currently they activate when the power-up is collected, but I'm going to be dabbling with the concept of having them activated upon tapping on the UI in the corner of the screen. This way, you can toggle that double jump in time with a dangerous situation rather than it being activated involuntarily.

If you have any suggestions for power-ups you'd like to see in the game, let me know!

1. Flesh out the power-up system in Corporate Salmon:a. Finalise the power-up list b. Currently the power-up object is expanded from a tiny file. To add some more detail to this, I'll be looking into doubling its size.c. Design the accompanying indicator on the speed UI in the corner of the screen. d. Look into whether being able to physically toggle the power ups works better for the game, rather than activated on collision.

2. Polish top of escalator and level exit

3. Look into extending the end of the escalator (Now that I've shaved a section off of the top)

I've got the top of the escalator working smoothly. Not only does it level out, but initially the step ascends to the level the player can see.

Here's a quick snap of what that looks like under the hood:

And here's what that looks like in action with the casing on:

As you can see in the above gif as well, I've implemented a couple of extra things;

1. End platform with a finish line on it2. Little finish line flags either side3. And of course.....

POWER-UPS

Yep, so I've finally got the power-ups implemented with a toggle-able function. Originally, I built the functionality that you just grab the power-ups and they instantly activate, but that left a lot of poorly timed situations which made them feel more like obstacles than perks (E.g. Low gravity kicking in and having you stuck in the air).

At first I had used the speed gauge window to display the currently selected power up in, but soon realised after that the position of the speed gauge would mean players would accidentally toggle their power-ups (Since it was the resting thumb position, the bottom right hand side of the screen).

I tried putting the monitor in the top left hand corner but that just made less play space on the screen and a hard to reach location to activate, so I made the activation function a downwards swipe.

At this point, I realised that after 8 different iterations of UI for the corner of the screen, it was probably a lost cause to have a screen/scale/chart/interface in the dead space of the bottom right hand corner. In contrast, it was bought up that having some negative space there for the thumb to rest might actually not be a bad thing.

From here came the revelation that a speed gauge wouldn't be necessary since you could gauge the speed of the escalator by looking at it!

In the end, it's more information that the player needs, so I scrapped it.

R.I.P.U.I

BACK TO POWER-UPS

The power-up once collected is displayed in the top left hand corner of the screen as a small icon and upon swiping the screen downwards the power activates. This includes some (And more) of these:

LOW GRAVITYLowers the gravity of all objects in the level, allows you to cover huge distances but can leave you floating if poorly timed.COIN MAGNETDrags all coins toward the player and consumes them.

BIG FISHMakes the player huge and therefore easier to climb the stairs which is more like a ramp to a larger player.

There's also slow motion (Which you've seen before) but also x2 multiplier which is a nod to the previous system I had in place.

What from here?1. Build the tutorial to not only introduce the various power-ups but the gameplay in general.2. Look at extending the escalator - It's getting really hard to judge at this point, but particularly with the power-ups I'm finding it easier to get up the escalator - Possibly making them an extra third as long would be something I'd be looking into. Failing that, having a variable that I can set/change that allows me to alter the height of the escalator easily. 3. More visual feedback when using the powers - At the moment they feel pretty bland to use, and you can only tell they've de-activated by them disappearing off the screen. No slider, no flashing as they're about to run out, nothing. To add, there isn't much visual indicator in the level that things are changing, so I'll be looking at adding some extra stuff.4. Start designs for new logo as mentioned previously.5. Try and experiment with the shop swipe movement - A friend who was also building a shop for their game managed to figure out some swipe code that works with moving multiple actors, so I'll be trying to integrate the solution he directed me to and tweak it for a looping carousel.6. Properly cost, name and order the various suits in game - A lot of the original ones are garbage and I'll be getting rid of (A lot of them to populate the rails with were just copy and paste with a hue alteration).

That'll be it for now, Thanks for giving this a read and stay tuned for more soon!

Today I'm going to be tackling 3 major areas of the project listed in the previous post:

1. Shop functionality - As mentioned in earlier posts, I rebuilt the shops functionality to let the player directly interact with the carousel after the players didn't seem to notice the nifty coat hanger arrow keys I made. This had a period of time that I dedicated to swipe functionality, but couldn't get the desired effect and settled for a two button screen split (Left side to move left, right side to move right). I'll be trying to implement a swipe functionality today.

2. Further experimentation with UI (Power-ups) - Whilst I have definitely written off displaying anything in the bottom right hand corner that is not absolutely critical, you can see from the latest gifs I've been sharing there is still some minimal UI on the top section of the screen. This needs some further tinkering, including (Despite my efforts to amend this) seeing if the power-ups would be better to appear anchored to the screen like a piece of a HUD (Like the score/height measure), or keep the current more physical weight to its positioning on the screen. Setting up a system that I can toggle between if I keep changing my mind would be the optimal solution.

3. Export a build - This one is particularly important, as the lack of testing on a physical device (Instead through a computer/browser) meant I didn't notice the issues with the interface (Of having the players' thumb naturally rest where it was displayed). It should also mean I can keep sending out Testflight builds to accumulate some more feedback.

Here's a fun gif to tide you over of me earlier experimenting with the grow function:

So update on the project - I've managed to get the new UI system working:1. Added a noise that indicates when a power up is toggled and collected (May also add one that kicks in when disabled)2. Swipe functionality was inverted as swiping upwards rather than down on the device felt better.3. Added a timer that lets you know how long you have left before the power up runs out4. Decided to fix the power up to the screen like UI to avoid perceptions that it was an object in game rather than a HUD element.5. Gutted all of the old UI out in the corner.

There's definitely still some work to be done on making this perfect - I'm needing to:1. Add some more visual and sound based feedback for the different power ups2. Figure out what happens when you collect multiple power ups or are mid power-up use (Ditch the previous one?)3. Decide on whether to remove people's power-ups upon death/moving between levels.

The other major thing I've been working on is Suit Yourself (The game shop), where I've managed to add the beginnings of swipe functionality:1. Compared to before where you tapped either side of the screen to scroll left and right, you now can swipe.2. Upon finishing your swipe, the clothes rack will automatically align to the nearest one to the player. 3. Set a maximum scroll speed to avoid the rack breaking as well as upper and lower limits to how far it can move.

This is all great, but there's still a bunch of things to fix/add:1. I've disabled looping as it was causing a bunch of issues of misalignment. I may add it back in eventually, but need to ensure the suits remain aligned as a priority.2. Making the salmon be aligned to the suit they're currently wearing from the store (Rather than scrolling from the first to the last for example).3. Tweaking the Sticking of the centre code - Whilst it does the job, it almost does it too well and as a result it makes it hard to move between suits next to one another.4. Refining the code that limits movement at either end - The code that stops the player from scrolling past all of the costumes does technically work, but has on a couple of occasions failed to stop movement then locked any interaction with the rack. I'll be looking into that.

Grabbing some lunch and I'll then post some gifs/video of current gameplay.

After a lot of faffing around, I've managed to get the shop working with swipe functionality. It no longer loops around, but does line up correctly, start the player with the suit they are currently wearing and stops the player from scrolling infinitely. With the system I have in place, it should be easy enough to add more costumes as time goes on.

I've also added noise to the power ups, although there's still the other two issues mentioned in the last post to address.

Here's some extra stuff add to the to do list:

1. More visual and audio stimuli when you buy stuff/interact with things in the store (Currently you don't even get a sound if you buy something)2. Spawning at the top of escalator - A lot of the spawning functionality was built around the escalator going off the top of the screen, but since levelling that out alignment problems have began occurring. I'll be needing to address that.3. Whilst I get rid of fish that fall off the bottom of the screen, on the later levels they get too good and rocket up the stairs. This in a gameplay sense is totally fine, but it means there's a huge glut of fish at the top of the escalator that aren't be de-spawned. 4. Finalise the colour of the power-ups - Currently they are the same colour as the first level, but I might decide a more neutral colour that works across all levels.

Here are some overarching things:1. Re-Design Splash Screen, logo and banners.2. Clear external assets for release3. Do tutorial banners and implement them appropriately4. For the store, get the suits and name, price, order and polish their designs. Cut some of the more generic ones.5. More feedback for the unique power-ups when used.6. Implement ad functionality and in app purchases7. Finish the loop of gameplay (Currently if you win, you can only keep playing the boss battle repeatedly when you press start).

Feeling a lot better for having some rest, although getting back into the project has taken a couple of days! I've started off with some visual tasks to ease myself back into it, for example, designing a bunch of costumes for the in game shop and remastering the old ones/hacking out the unnecessary ones. A good rule of thumb I applied whilst in the pool was if I couldn't remember the suit, it wasn't iconic enough to be on the roster.

Some of these will be saved for a later update, as the process of implementing each takes a bunch of time to do (And there's still so much left to do as time runs out!)

Here's the backlog of things that I have to do from here on out:

Final tutorial implementation: I spent a bunch of time on holiday designing how I want the tutorial to work and building the logic loops based on how players do. For example, what happens if the player dies mid objective, do you restart the tutorial or just the section they've reached?

Here's a rough explanation of what I've decided:

0: Tap to jump (Bottom of the third image) - Show a finger pressing on the screen along with a text prompt telling the player to jump1: Flop to the Top - Tell them to climb upwards (And that there is a top)2: Collect Coins - If the player survives long enough, a coin will automatically fall onto the screen. When this happens, the game will temporarily slow down, a UI element will pop up with the word "COLLECT" and a giant arrow that will point at the coin in question. Collecting 3 coins will stop the notification being displayed on the next playthrough. 3: Avoid fish - Shortly after the first coin drops, a salmon will fall from the top, slowing the game down again and popping up the word "AVOID" with an arrow. Dodging two fish will stop the message displaying the following playthrough.4: Green lines pop up - When the first green line approaches, a screen will pop in explaining that tapping on the green line will do something.5: In the second frame of the animation, the player will be seen to be launched upwards with the accompanying visual positives (Money, arrows pointing upwards and possibly a green tick)6: After that short explanation, the first green line will appear. Accompanying this will be an arrow pointing to it and the caption "BONUS". This caption may change to something more appropriate in time. 7: Red Lines pop up - After a decent gap in gameplay (at least the first level completed), the red lines will be introduced with a similar tutorial to its green line counterpart.8: The second part of the animation will show what happens if the player taps when passing through the red line: The escalator accelerating, less of a leap upwards and loss arrows dropping from the top.9: Red line appears on the screen after the tab is closed. Arrow and description "AVOID" appears.

Power up tutorial:

1: Collect Power Up - Like with coins previously, a power up will be dropped into the level, the game will slow down and display that the player should grab it. 2: Use Power Up - Upon collecting the power up, a screen will be revealed indicating the player needs to swipe to activate the power. 3: Power Up Active - The second frame of the animation shows the power up becoming active (Grow) and the icon for the power up changing.

The reason this one is separate is the indecision of where to put it in the game and whether it needs a separate tutorial screen to display it. Most likely, this will fit in snugly between the green and red line introduction. I may do some experiments to see if an on screen indicator of what to do is enough for this one. (E.G. Showing a finger on screen swiping to indicate what you need to do).

Whilst this is a task that needs implementing (And have started laying the groundwork for in a separate build), I'll be focusing on something less gargantuan today. As I mentioned before, I'm easing myself back into the project with more achievable tasks (As when I came back from holiday, I dived straight back into the tutorial logic and obliterated my head). Instead, here's what I'll be focusing on instead:

1. A line that shows your last point reached - A lot of similar games have this marker, be that a tombstone or skull of your previous progress. Possibly having it as a line that can actually boost you up as well might be a nice touch.2. Polish the top of the escalator - Upon showing it to family, a consensus was reached that the top needed a little more polish, for example, making the little exit grill you get at the top of escalators. I'm also tempted to add in some confetti or visual reward for getting promoted. 3. Drop off for certain objects spawning on the screen when the top of the escalator is reached - Currently, the profit and loss lines look quite bizarre when the player finishes the level, spawning beneath the position of the player despite being out of reach. There's also fish, coins and power ups continuing to spawn despite reaching the top. This can be hilarious but could be exploited (People hanging around at the top and farming coins) or frustrating (Fish spawning on top of you and launching you back as you go to the exit). Putting a limit on the spawn point height for these objects will probably do the job.4. Enemy Salmon max height - With all objects in the game, if they fall beneath a certain height relative to the player, they die. For example, the coins fall off the bottom of the screen and die. The enemy salmon also have this function built in but don't have an upper limit to when they are removed from the game. Whilst this isn't a problem in earlier levels, in later ones where they become more proficient in jumping they are able to easily scale the escalator (Leading to a glut of fish alive off screen). I'll be logging how many fish are in-game at a time (And who aren't interacting with the player) then finding ways to either kill them off upon reaching a certain height or temporarily disabling them so they remain in view. 5. Better visual indicators on the store - Whilst I did add the various displayed buttons (BUY/WEAR/WORN), there needs to be better UI feedback. For example, having the game ask you if you want to buy the suit you've currently got selected before returning to the game. Another is having an indicator that you can actually buy a suit! Currently, there's no sound or visual indication other than nothing happening to indicate something is unaffordable. I'll likely add a message to the screen, an appropriate audio cue, alter the opacity of suits that can be purchased. I also want to add a notification that a certain suit is available, to drive player traffic towards the store. That would likely be adding an exclamation mark and more flashing to the icon on the game over screen. 6. Structure the menu functionality after the campaign has been completed - In the current game, winning returns you to the main screen, then upon playing again sends you straight to the boss battle. I will be adding in an endless mode for completing the game and in turn the ability to switch modes on the main menu.

7. Add pause menu to the end game sequence - Originally I didn't want to include it, but upon realising how much of a pain in the backside getting footage of the boss sequence was, being able to access it would be a plus. Shouldn't take too long to do. 8. To add some more variety to the levels - I'm currently mulling over changing the suit designs of the other fish between levels. This would tease the shop through a suit being unlocked with each promotion. The only thing that I'm conflicted on is whether doing this makes the player stand out less. 9. Delay on settings toggle - A recurring issue that I'll be dealing with is a delay on the settings tab popping in on game over. I've seen several players press on the settings bar accidentally when they lose (return to menu/buy ad free/see other games). This should be easily fixed with a subtle delay of a second on their activation. This might also apply to the accompanying buttons for the play button (Suit Yourself and Stats). 10. Update bear graphics - After an article from Touch Arcade pointed out the end boss looked like an aardvark (and some testers saying it doesn't look enough like a bear), I'm going to do some refinements to its design. I'm wanting to avoid giving it teeth to not make it scary, but it might be necessary to make it more bear-ish. 11. Red arrows cause lag - Upon jumping on loss lines, the volume of red arrows falling from the ceiling causes the game to glitch on some lower end devices (and isn't particularly clear to what you're looking at anyway). I'll be refining their design and trying to space them out a little more. 12. More indicators of progress - Little notices that let you know how far you're off reaching the top or maxing out a level on coins would help keep players engaged. I'll be dabbling with some ideas for this.

There's obviously a bunch of other things overarching that I've got to do, but this will do for now! Keep an eye on development over the next few days for more updates!

Thanks for reading through this marathon post, writing these really helps me get a better sense of grounding on the project, as well as assembling lists that I can work through (And can tangibly see things getting ticked off).

Got a biiiig update for you - Made a large amount of progress in the last week:

1. Bear graphics updates: After having it compared to an ant eater and the shape of the face being unclear, I've made some adjustments to its design, giving it a set of teeth, adjustment to the pupil/nostrils/ears and adding a suit similar to the portrait on the wall. I'll be updating that portrait as well to match in a more similar way to the bear in game.

2. Tutorial finished: After a lot of faffing around and racking my brains, the tutorial is fully implemented. In the end, I decided against having pop in panels that obstructed gameplay. Instead, I used the slow motion function to give the player a couple of seconds to view a new feature in moderate safety and giving labels highlighting what to do. These are spaced out over the first level (And one other feature introduced in level 2). This is shown and displayed with a finger that pops into view with instructions with what the player has to do. Spawning of objects is dictated by progress through the tutorial (Green lines aren't introduced until enemies have been cleared, a power up has been used and a coin collected). I'll have to do some testing with this to make sure this is a suitable and clear method for the game, but we will see.

3. Shop final pass: I've made a pile of changes to the shop structure:a. Costumes - I've added 10 extra suits to the mix of available costumes, as well as ordering them in price (And giving them prices). At this point, the total stands at 31 suits in game (Including the one you start with). b. Notification - Upon a suit being available for purchase, a notification comes through on the game over screen to notify a suit is available for purchase so the player doesn't have to continuously check back.c. Made out of price range suits clearly un-purchasable by deactivating the buy button and replacing it with a low opacity padlock. d. Display of price/cost offsetting adjusted to stop lower amounts being cut off the screen. e. The naked player costume is unlocked from completing the game now, and cannot be purchased in store.f. A lot of old costumes revamped and recoloured (since many were just duplicates of one another).

4. Power ups:a. I've updated the icons for them once collected to make them clearer and cleaner in design. The feather for example at the size it was previously was hard to identify. I've now been able to add individual hairs(?) to the feather.b. As with the coins, I've created an animation for the placeholder design I had before, changing it to a square shape and adding a rotating animation. I've also altered the colour to make it stand out. c. The slow motion power up has been given a boost by not only slowing the player down but physically stopping the movement of all other objects in the level for that period of time. d. Power ups that are collected in the previously level continue with you if you get promoted.

5. Level select: After beating the game, a "lift" will be available which will give access to various start points in game and the extra menu selection at the start of the game will unlock. For now, this will just unlock level select, but in time I want to add arcade mode to it as well as local multiplayer.

6. Best run so far: I've added a flag that points out your furthest point reached in game. Originally I had a margin line going horizontally across the screen but this was too messy visually (with the green and red lines passing down as well).

7. In game optimisation: previously, there was a lot of objects in game that were causing slowdown. Here's some of the fixes I did:a. Coins were piling up on steps and causing slowdown, so I raised the height they were dropped in from spawn so they had a lower chance of running out of bounce. I also gave them an extra kick by adding a force to their descent multiplied by the current level difficulty (Factoring in the increased speed of escalator).b. As mentioned in a previous post, rival salmon were getting removed from the level at the bottom of the screen but not at the top. To combat this, I set a maximum height the salmon could go before being removed from the level OR having their jump function disabled. This means they fall back down the level and therefore have more interactions with the player.

8. UI Clean-Up: I noticed from looking back on a lot of my old footage that there was loads of overlapping numbers and text filling the screen that was honestly painful to look at:a. Cut out the text identifiers for power ups, increasing their size to make it clearer what they dob. Removed the instructions from the red and green lines, instead of including what to do with them in the tutorials. c. Added a low opacity screen into the background of the pause menu, helping the icons stand out.d. Shifting the height meter to the bottom of the screen as it's less important information. e. Can't remember if I mentioned it in another post, but I've staggered the menu pop in in the game over screen - I had several complaints of people tapping the screen and pressing one of the various buttons (Other apps, unlock ads), so I've staggered their spawning so the replay button pops in first and the settings menu last.

To do today: a. Finish level selection screen b. Update player ties on the main menuc. Release the latest Testflight build

To do in the long run:Implement iOS Features/AdsAdd in splash screen/logoAdd in new music/audioPromotional bannerTrailer productionSubmit to AppleRelease browser version.

Stay tuned for more soon, I'll try and space these out more rather than just doing one massive post.

Another update incoming! Here's what I've been up to over the last week:

1. Nitpicking on the shop controls - On the previous build, it was possible to completely jam the carousel of suits by swiping on either end, and the suits would randomly glitch and rotate. I fixed this by altering the code to have an absolute stop when you move one of either direction (And using the speed of the carousel either direction to dictate what angle the suits swung to. I also altered the menu and start buttons so depending where you accessed the shop from you get different layouts.

2. Adding sound effects - There were a couple of areas such as the power ups that lacked sound effects, so players didn't realise they were active. The shop also received various sound effects based on whether you were buying/choosing or failing to afford certain suits. New buttons added also lacked the bleeps and bloops older ones had.

4. Doubled the length of the boss battle - Testers mentioned that the boss battle felt quite abrupt in length and wanted to spend more time on the level, so I increased the length of the level. I also tweaked the bear movement as well to make him more present in the level. There was also collision boxes he was getting stuck on that I've now removed.

5. Fixing bugs - It was possible to break the game by jumping out of range of the collision region at the end of the boss level, so instead I check if the player x position to see if they've covered a certain distance.

6. Level select screen - The interface given a tasty UI with a similar scrolling swipe system to Suit Yourself's Carousel. As you can see in the previous gif, I had all of the options visible on screen for the various floors, but have instead opted or seeing a limited number on screen at once (And a standardised colour). I doubled down on the idea of having the level select be a lift that you can only unlock once you've beaten the game.

7. Gameplay loop finished - At the end of the game, level select unlocks and the game circles back around to ground floor.

8. Further optimisation - In an effort to reduce the amount of content loaded per scene I've split the music up into atlases as well, reducing the majority of scene load by 4mb each. Whilst this doesn't seem like much, when I introduce the new soundtracks this will make a huge difference to load times. There's definitely still some refinement to do, but at this point it could probably wait till the update (Since we're talking about pretty minute amounts compared to what I had before (Down from 70mb to 18mb))

9. Ad implementation/iAP - The basic interstitial advertisements have been implemented on a simple system on 1 ad every 5 deaths. I'll also be implementing the coin unlock reward ads (Watch an ad for 50 coins)

10. OUTSOURCING! To finish the project, I've acquired the assistance of graphics designer Katy Marshall and Musician Will Bedford.

Katy will be doing some high resolution graphics for the App Store, the logo, banners and the in game splash screen. She's already taken my very rough drawing of a fish dollar and given it a remastering:

As for Will, he did the original soundtrack for Corporate Salmon a couple of years back and I've bought him back on board to produce the final release version! We've worked together a bunch on previous games before and he's done a bunch of other commercial projects.

A lot of work at this point is just doing loads of nitty gritty bits. Here's my current to do list:

IMPROVEMENT NOTES:1. Tap looks like top - Stagger spawns. DONE2. Make powerup clearer in what it does - UI needs final pass.3. Title needs revamp - At the least needs cleaner lines. DONEISH?4. Modify the stats displayed to more relevant stuff.5. Add highlight arrow before green profit line on screen 6. Try different colour variations/thickness of line.7. Particle shoot when suit bought?8. Notification after 4 plays to pay to disable ads.9. Look at modifying the extremeness of slow-mo for powerup. DONE10. Have a cap for number of deaths before tutorial advances.11. Have rate app as a seperate notification? 12. Add bear poking his head over desk sniffing the player.13. Check out whether suits wants to be equipped/bought before starting game.14. Pin down what you want to use the leaderboards for.15. Maybe revise the floor select screen.16. Paused button text doesn't launch the player properly. 17. Maybe bigger exclamation mark on shop notifications?18. Update Button font to match padlock? NAH19. Make BG suits move or get rid of them. DONE20. Disable the ability to keep swiping and updating the timer/make powerup noise DONE21. Update icon for game WIP22. Change display in lift icon DONE23. Add fade to bottom of flag pole best distance. DONE24. Experiment with location on UI game over spawn.25. Build suit reward ad coin bonus26. Research into bonus for buying suits (Every suit bought gives you a powerup/bonus: - Power up to start level with - Coin of type (GOLD/SILVER/BRONZE) - Some kind of jackpot? - Ad free for 10 minutes? - No competition? (Seems like a cop out) - Trick or treat theme? - Swipe to spin?

27. Bear given googly eyes? NAH28. Memory Drops in store - Look into it. DONE29. Confetti on victory level? HMMM30. Try and address weird roll of the bear at the start of the boss fight31. Look into adding gaps in the floor of the boss level for extra challenge?32. Revamp Portrait of Bear again DONE33. Make the suit falling to the ocean floor fall in seperate bits (Looks too much like a dead body). DONE34. Unlocked notification for beating game (Suit unlocked, level select now available)35. Add a loading screen DONE36. Background refinement/experimenting with reducing file size DONE

There's a bunch of other stuff I'm currently involved in, for example deciding on the icon for the app. Here's the selection I've got to work from!

Let me know which one is your favourite and comment below!

Some other cool stuff I've added in:

Added a conveyor belt to the boss level to make it a bit harder to complete! Might even add some obstacles. Also re-did the design of the bear to more match the portrait I updated.

Updated the slomotion power up - Before the bullet time went a lot slower, so you had less time to cover ground and have a bit more control of the fish during that time period! Also looks cool as hell with all the objects standing still.

Notifications menu - For various parts of the game, I've designed a menu that pops in with a binary choice to make based on stuff in game, such as exiting the shop without buying/choosing the suit you've got selected, or asking you to review the game. How and where I implement these is yet to be decided.

Stay tuned for more soon, it's going to be a reasonably quiet weekend for work but I'll still post up the odd thing or two!

Work on Corporate Salmon is coming to a head this week, aiming to have the majority of the work for the app functionality done in the next 48 hours! I'm going to try and keep this reasonably concise since I've got limited time on my hands at this point!

Here's some of the stuff I've been up to since I last posted:

- New music implemented: Corporate Salmon now has some snazzy new audio, including for the finale of the project now! I also rebuilt the volume systems for the tracks, so as you enter a level, an ID will check what audio should be playing and will alter the channel levels accordingly.

- Tutorial remastered: After doing some testing with users, I found that a lot of people were struggling to get to grips with several elements of the game via the tutorial. Here are some of the things I did to improve the tutorial:1. Removed the on screen text only for instructions and made a windowed panel to display instructions, accompanied by images of the various objects and enemies.2. Reduced the thickness of the tutorial arrow lines and softened the colour to something still noticeable but less garish than before. 3. Moved the tutorial window to the bottom of the screen instead of the top to avoid blocking the descending objects and the player.4. Spaced the stages out further to compensate for my own skill bias.

- Power up interface overhauled: This has been bugging me for a while, but upon seeing players interacting with the game, very few noticed the power up or on that note used the swipe function to activate the powerup. From this, I made the following changes:1. Ditched the swipe function and returned to a button push: From the few people I saw using it, many ended up immediately dying after from taking their focus away from tapping to jump. The easiest way to rectify this was have a button instead that appears when available then disappears shortly after. 2. Moved the power up UI to the bottom left hand corner of the screen to be more visible to the player and easier to reach mid game.3. Added a circular back layer to make it a physical button rather than just a UI.4. Created some really tasty particle sequences to indicate that the power up is available - Most of this involved inputting angles that slowly change their properties over time, creating a variety of tasty displays! Check out the collection of tests below:

- Daily reward function: This was a fun bit of the project to build! Like with many games and apps, I've built a wheel of fortune to welcome returning players who open the game on a daily basis. The player receives various amounts of money or a power up as a prize. Originally I was planning to add grander power ups such as gold coins replacing regular ones for 24 hours but I decided against that as it could have unbalanced the game or led to exploits. Check out the final set up below:

- Remastered introduction graphics: This was done for a couple of reasons, one being having all these delicious graphics by Katy that were only getting used in the banners/promotional stuff (And my own artwork having wobbly ass lines/edges). Instead of using the escalator which isn't overly stimulating as an introduction for the game, I opted for the Salmon falling back onto a bed of money, similar to the layout on the loading screen. This still needs a tweak or two, but in general, I'm very happy with the outcome, particularly the distortion of the money as the salmon lands on it.

Here's what I've got to do from here on out:

1. Hide part 1 of the tutorial that overlaps with the first tutorial panel2. Implement remaining music3. Fade/shrink wheel whilst the game is transitioning out (As it currently glitches during the transition)4. Look into having a mininum distance the player has to go before you lose a power up upon dying (E.g. If you immediately mess up on the first step and die after getting the daily reward that's going to upset the player).5. Update coin collection noises as I recently noticed the bulk of them are identical and it gets a bit grating with the number you collect in later levels. 6. Fix bug at end of game where you can click go to next level before it realises you're meant to go to the CEO office instead.7. Settings menu had some weird alignment issues with the shop specifically, not sure what the cause of the bug is yet. 8. Music needs to stop during adverts (Stopped working because of the amendments listed at the top of the update!)9. Finalise the credits, which includes updating the text colour to make it more legible and add all the names who have contributed to the project. 10. Reward ad notification - Look into adding a pop up window when you press on the watch ad for 50 coins to make sure people don't accidentally tap it and get annoyed. 11. Issue with the ad removal notification that sends the player back to the menu rather than into the next game upon pressing yes or no.12. Update graphics for main menu to Katy's visuals13. Implement reward ad network and the appropriate logic (E.g. If this ad fails to load)14. Final pass of optimisation15. Release remaining Testflight build, gather last minute feedback16. Make any remaining amendments to the game and submit to Apple.

1. Music fully integrated: At this point, all of the music/audio for the game has been fully implemented, making for a much more immersive fish sim *Cough*2. Adjusted profit/loss line to cover more off screen space - Initially if you fell off the left side of the screen, you wouldn't be able to jump on the green lines (Even if you were the same Y position), so I've extended them to accommodate. This in turn broke some systems fixing, so was fun to troubleshoot/amend.3. Transitional overworld map: One of the big pieces of feedback from folks playing the game was a feeling of a lack of progress, so in-between promotions I've created a short cutscene which shows the view of the skyscraper the business is hosted in, showing the pink icon of the player progressing upwards. Here's what that looks like:

This should hopefully create more of a sense of progress throughout the game and also link in nicely to the ending. 4. Implemented flow mechanics: To add some more challenge to the game, I've implemented flow that adjusts the difficulty to the player skill. This one is a bit of a gamble as it's very close to the deadline with little testing time, so may scale back it's effects. 5. Fish power levels: This has been implemented on a subtle level, but I will be looking at adding some more overt indicators of progress (A bar to show the power level of certain fish). The increased power basically consists of a higher jumping. 6. Removed coat hangers from shop and in the level select added a scroll function to make it clear what function you need to do to move the camera (compared to the arrows that were there before that didn't work!)

Secondary to do:- Implement more ads (Testers reported only seeing 2 ads having completed the entire game)- If a player cleanly beats a level without any deaths, set the ad tally to show an ad next time they die- Padlocks on suits and buttons mean different things - find better symbols. Adjust the font to indicate it's unaffordable (Red)- Gameplay music needs to start from the top when you transition over into play - Boss music comes too early- Have a “3 more levels till the top” notification- Naked salmon is unlocked by default - Make sure this issue is fixed- Look into upper/lower limit restrictions (Camera should come back down upon going to crazy high altitude) - Disable review notification once you've written a review.- Tweak bear mouth to roar when sound effect plays.

Stay tuned for more soon, I'm aiming to have the Apple build submitted by latest Friday but preferably today. That would make the development time for this project approximately 6 months, a significantly quicker turnaround than the 5 years it took to complete Narcissus.

One of the neat things about developing the game is a lot of complex systems have been designed, such as shop functionality, upgrade levels, notifications, interface design that I'll likely be filleting (Ha) out for my next project. This could technically make the turnaround of projects even faster if I don't have to create these systems repeatedly.

I'll likely do a full breakdown summary of the project in comparison, what I've learnt and how I'll change my workflow for the next project I do, but for now I've got a game to finish!

This should all be submitted with any luck tomorrow, already done half of it today and have the groundwork down for the core trailer for Corporate Salmon.

Main thing will be whether there's any issues with the build I submit, but at that point it's out of my hands!

For anyone interested, here's some of the last minute improvements/refinements I made to the game:1. Reward ads - Fully integrated ad system with a dynamic reward, meaning I can change it outside of the app if people don't seem to be going for it!2. Replaced the leaderboards with credits window - I'll be adding the leaderboards back in later, but for now they're replaced with a diddy credits window that lists the developers. Might in a later patch include links to respective social networks but unsure yet.3. Altered speed of shop scroll, replaced padlock on button with how many more coins you need and a red tint to price (To indicate not enough money currently).4. Edited the ending so the player has to see the salmon move on screen before skipping (Players complained about the ending being anticlimactic but what was happening was they were skipping).5. Refined the enemy spawn to make more salmon spawn from the top than from the back6. Fixed issues with the tutorial that caused the salmon to drift off the screen in zero G7. Fully implemented new ad systems with backups in place in case one fails8. Altered gameplay looping to reduce risk of music cutting out9. Upon beating the game, have naked salmon unlocked and level select toggled (So the player understands what they've unlocked)10. General nit picking and tweaks - Plenty of those!

Stay tuned for more tomorrow, once I've finished the project up I'll be doing a postmortem of the project up till this point. My intention with the project will be to continue supporting the game once it's released (Unless it absolutely tanks for one reason or another) with plans for extra game modes. Now that I'll have time, I might even look at doing a live action trailer before the game launches, but we'll see!